N-plant owners ‘cut corners on repairs’

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 9

N-plant owners ‘cut corners on repairs’

NZPA Philadelphia I In its haste to get the now-crippled reactor into commercial operation at Three Mile Island, the ; Metropolitan Edison Company, deliberate!}’ cut cor- i nets on vital repairs, the < “Philadelphia Inquirer” has ’ quoted former and present 1 company employees as say- i ing. \ The newspaper said the’ workers told it that Metro-, t politan Edison had employ-if ees in sensitive jobs work toil the point of exhaustion and|c skimped on important main- t tenance work while the reac- ] tor was being readied for t commercial use. <

The “inquirer” said its reporters contacted more than 200 Three Mile Island workers and interviewed 50 of them.

Employees had said that the company faked tests on safety equipment, made maintenance budget cuts in the midst of continuing troubles with the new reactor, and ignored inspection reports about faulty equipment, the “Inquirer” said. Metropolitan Edison runs and is co-owner of the nuclear plant 16km from Harrisburg. The crippled reactor, known as unit two, went into production in December. Engineers are still slowly! bringing it to a cold shutdown after the March 28 accident that released some radioactivity into the environment and prompted the evacuation of young children! and pregnant women from! the immediate area. It was' the worst accident in the, history of America’s nuclear! power industry. Asked to comment on the story, a Metropolitan Edison spokesman, who requested his name not be used, said: “Some of the things they are saying are probably things that will be part of the formal investigation so we can’t make any comments at this particular time.” But James Hanlon, a former Three Mile Island superintendent who now manages a plant in Arkansas, said that any austerity moves affected only non-es-

sential maintenance, not nuclear safety. A former maintenance machinist, Norman Reismiller, who quit his job last year after 21 years with Metropolitan Edison was quoted as saying, “We were damned scared in unit two when they were starting up. I’m telling you, unit two was rushed. Everybody who works there knows that.” The newspaper cited one( case, which it said was substantiated in Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents, where a welder was ordered to make improper welds in the core of the reactor — a construction defect that went undisco-

[vered for five years. i The “Inquirer” also said I that Richard Blakeman, a I former unit two mechanical I maintenance man, com-

j plained that his overworked i' repair crews were forced to hurried, makeshift repairs on vital equipment. ; “I’ve seen guys work around the clock 24 or 32 hours,’’ Mr Blakeman was quoted as saying. “You just go, go, go, go. It’s crazy.” “The typical worker is offered 500 to 100 hours of ■ overtime a year,” one ■ worker said. “The power industry,” said a unit two (foreman, “believes it’s t cheaper to work its people jlong hours than to hire (more people.” j An N.R.C. spokesman said ;the Federal Government did • not impose limits on the Inumber of hours and days I put in by nuclear plant Iworkers. I At least 57 incidents similar in some ways to the accident at the Three Mile IsI land plant have occurred at seven other plants built by the same company, according to reports just made public by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unlike the accident at the Three Mile Island plant none of the other 57 incidents caused any serious damage to reactor cores, the reports say. The incidents previously had been reported to rhe commission, but were picked out for closer attention after the N.R.C. asked plant operators for a new accounting of mishaps that shared ele-

ments of the Three Mile Island accident. The reports show that “feedwater transients” — large swings of temperature or pressure — are frequent in the “Pressurised wate r reactors” made by Babcock and Wilcox, the company that built the Three Mile Island plant. Such an incident was blamed for the accident at iThree Mile Island. In Washington, the Supreme Court has refused to consider whether all nuclear plants throughout the country should be shut dowm. The case on which the court was asked to act began with a petition to the N.R.C. by a Nashville, Tennessee, resident, last July — eight months before the crisis at the Three Mile Island plant. Ironically, the Three Mile Island reactor which went awry, was specifically mentioned in the petition, which asked the N.R.C. to begin shutting down all nuclear power plants within 30 days on the grounds that they were harmful.